Stepan Shahumyan §

Stepan Shahumyan was the Armenian Bolshevik leader of the Baku Commune in 1918, often called the "Caucasian Lenin" in Soviet memory. He led the Baku Soviet during the collapse of imperial authority, when Bolsheviks, Dashnaks, Müsavatists, British agents and Ottoman forces all treated Baku oil as strategically decisive. His alliance with Armenian armed forces during the March Days made him central to Azerbaijani memory of Bolshevik-Dashnak violence, while Soviet Armenian memory cast him as an internationalist martyr. After the Commune fell, Shahumyan and the other Baku Commissars were captured and executed near the Caspian in September 1918. His biography is a warning against clean ideological categories: in Baku, Bolshevik internationalism operated through ethnic armed power, and class politics could not escape Armenian-Muslim conflict.